One of the great things about living in a place like Washington, DC is that you get to meet members of Congress and Department Agency Heads in the course of an ordinary day. You meet them at parties, you ride with them in elevators, they are your neighbors, they attend your church, you pass them jogging on the Mall or along the C&O Canal and they often visit law firms. I am happy to have met not only Senator McCain, but also his remarkable 106 year old mother Roberta and his lesser known brother Joe.
Although Senator John McCain (R- Arizona) was a famously lax student, he became an avid reader and favored history and biography. Like McCain I also favor those two genres. Below is a list of books by and about the late Senator.
Books By John McCain
- Hard call: great decisions and the extraordinary people who made them
- The restless wave: good times just causes great fights and other appreciations
- Worth fighting for: a memoir
- Faith of my fathers: a family memoir
- Character is destiny: inspiring stories we should all remember
- Why courage matters: the way to a braver life
- Last letters home
- World war two for kids: a history with 21 activities
Books About John McCain
- John McCain and American odyssey by Robert Timberg
- John McCain: an American hero by John Perritano
- Six years in the Hanoi Hilton: an extraordinary story of courage in survival in Vietnam by Amy Shively hawk
- The Nightingale Song By Mark Shields (Recommended by a reader of this blog as one of the best books he ever read. About “courage and cowardice, honor and betrayal, suffering and death and the human spirit” interweaving stories of John McCain, James Webb, Oliver North, Robert McFarland and John Poindexter.)
Presidential Campaigns
- John McCain: speeches from the 2008 presidential campaign trail by Forest Rees
- Mccains promise: aboard the straight talk express with John McCain by David Foster Wallace
- Game change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin and the race of a lifetime by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin
“The McCain Papers” Archive at ASU
In 2012, the late Sen. John McCain donated his papers to Arizona State University. The archive, known simply as the McCain Collection, is expected to grow dramatically over the next few months. More than 800 boxes of his materials — records, photographs, correspondence — await shipment from his offices in Maryland and Washington, D.C., to ASU Library, where they will be accessible to scholars, historians and the public for generations to come.
Read interview with ASU archivist Renee James discussing McCain archives here.
Condolences to his families and friends on the passing of a remarkable man.